SCARSDALE, NY — You can find the secret to creating lively Passover seders in a surprising place — the 1,800-year-old law code, the Mishnah.
For starters, the Mishnah designed a careful balance between aspects of the seder evening that should be fixed and others that left room for spontaneity.
Fixed elements included drinking four cups of wine, eating matzah, explaining the meaning of the Passover sacrifice, eating matzah with bitter herbs, and reciting the six psalms of Hallel.
These would bind Jews together as a people wherever and whenever they live.
But when it came to telling the Passover story, the Mishnah encouraged creativity. This would prevent seders from becoming lifeless clones. Brilliant!
LOS ANGELES — In every generation, the Haggadah tells us, the wise, the simple, the non-askers and even the baddies are obligated to see themselves as though they themselves went out from Egypt.
I hope that the closest some of us come to this ideal is not the stroll through the Passover aisle of our neighborhood supermarket.
Why does Passover have to come in a neatly packaged box with easy bake instructions?
This Passover, to heat up and personalize my leaving from Egypt, I decided to foreg...
FIRST, the good news: this charoset recipe yields scrumptious charoset.
Second, the better news: If you like charoset not just for the seders, but for the rest of Passover, this charoset will last all of Passover, just so it’s refrigerated.
Finally, the bad news: I cannot list the ingredients by quantity, and cannot set down a simple sequence of how this is done.
Why? Take this simple fact, for example. If I tell you to slice and peel so-and-so many apples, they will oxidize and turn brown ...
LOS ANGELES — With lots of matzah, boxes of the right flat stuff required for the making of everything, are you kosher for Passover? What about the day after; then what happens?
Last Passover I began a personal exodus that saw a departure from the diet I’d been using since my earliest days.
What better time to begin? Passover is a celebration of the “going out” from Egypt, of the search for a Jewish identity that can be found on the way.
At Passover, each of us is commanded to eat and...
NEW YORK — “Next year in Jerusalem” is, of course, the traditional conclusion of the Passover seder. But “Next year in Aruba” may be gaining ground.
Passovers spent away from home are a long-standing tradition. Instead of hauling boxes of dishes out of storage, performing bedikat chametz and spending days or weeks preparing kosher-for-Passover meals, observant East Coast Jews who could afford it once spent Passover at resorts in the Catskills and the Poconos.
Guests would spend up to...